Lines and Colors art blog
  • Cristóbal Pérez García

    Cristobal Perez Garcia, urban landscape
    Cristóbal Pérez García is a contemporary Spanish painter who captures his landscapes — and in particular, his urban scenes — with fresh, immediate brush work, lively color and a sure feeling of naturalistic light and shadow.

    When viewing the galleries of work on his website, be sure to open your browser window as wide as possible, as the images will size up larger, and much of the visual appeal of his work in more visible in larger images.

    Even in those paintings that look tight and finished in small reproductions, larger images show his approach to be painterly and direct, as most of his work appears to be relatively large in scale. He works primarily in oil, but also in water media, and there are works in which he appears to bring techniques from one discipline into the other.

    I particularly enjoy the forceful geometry of his urban compositions, and the way that is reinforced by passages of light and dark as well as higher and lower chroma.

    There is a short video on Vimeo called Traffic, that shows the artist at work on a large scale painting on location, and a smaller piece in the studio.

    Cristóbal Pérez García’s work will be on display in upcoming shows in Barcelona at Grupd’ArtEscolà gallery location Galería Mar from 5 March to 18 March, 2015 and in the U.S. at ArtExpo New York from April 23-26, 2015,



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  • Eye Candy for Today: Eugène Ciceri winter scene

    Winter Scene with Two Men, Eugene Ciceri
    Winter Scene with Two Men, Eugène Ciceri

    In the Metropolitan Museum of Art; use the zoom or download icons under the image.

    Ciceri’s wonderful evocation of winter is at once both drawing and painting; naturalistic and stylized; controlled and free; monochromatic and yet rich with “color” in a way similar to Chinese ink paintings.



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  • Chris Turnham (update 2015)

    Chris Turnham, illustration
    Chris Turnham is a screenprint-maker and illustrator who works in film and television as well as publishing.

    His crisp, lively images of architecture, streets, people and plants always seem loose and free, despite their exacting draftsmanship and use of hard edges. Largely, I think, this is due to Turnham’s deft use of close color and value relationships, with which he somehow coaxes softness out of hardness.

    I particularly enjoy his stylized but naturalistic depiction of plant forms, and I was delighted when reproductions of some of his work for the movie Coraline was included in the “Coraline Mystery Box” I received as part of LAIKA’s promotion for the movie back in 2008. (See my post on my Coraline Mystery Box and Coraline Mystery Box Images.)

    Chris Turnham’s work, specifically his silkscreen prints, will be on display in an exhibition titled “California Modernists” at Gallery Nucleus in Alhambra, CA, from February 21 to March 1, 2015.

    For more, see my previous posts on Chris Turnham (below).



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  • Paul-César Helleu

    Paul Cesar Helleu, pastel society portraits, chalk, drypoint etching
    Though he painted landscapes and still life, and worked in oil, French artist Paul-César Helleu was known primarily for his beautiful portraits of turn of the century society women, done primarily in pastel, chalk and drypoint etching.

    Helleu entered the prestigious École des Beaux-Arts at an early age, studying in the academic tradition under Jean-Léon Gérôme. He also came into contact artists like Monet, Whistler, and in particular, John Singer Sargent, with whom he would have a life-long friendship.

    He also befriended and learned from society painter Giovanni Boldini, but it was an encounter with James Jacques Tissot, who he met through Whistler, that sparked his enthusiasm for drypoint etching. Helleu went on to create numerous drypoint prints (images above, bottom three). These are not as well represented in current online collections of his work as his pastels and chalk drawings, but there is a nice selection of them on the site of the Brooklyn Museum.

    I particularly enjoy the way Helleu combines linear elements and hatching-like textures with more painterly passages in his pastels, and the loose freedom of much of the line work in his chalk drawings.

    Among his other accomplishments, Helleu designed the Zodiac ceiling mural in New York’s Grand Central Station.

    There is a website devoted to the artist: Les Amis de Pau-César Helleu, established by his daughter.



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  • Zezhou Chen

     Zezhou Chen, concept art and illustration
    Zezhou Chen is a Chinese concept artist and illustrator working for the gaming industry.

    His subjects are usually of fantasy or science fiction themes. The latter includes a nicely retro-future piece that is part of a group project called “Retro“.

    His website includes galleries of his work for book covers, games and various personal projects. His style and subject matter appears to include influences from classical Chinese myth and history as well as contemporary and classic science fiction and fantasy.

    I enjoy the way he combines passages of overt digital painting technique with others that are closer to traditional media in appearance. He plays with light and composition in ways that give his pieces a dramatic, theatrical feeling.

    [Via io9]



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  • Eye Candy for Today: Peder Krøyer’s Luncheon

    A luncheon. The artist, his wife and the writer Otto Benzon, Peder Severin Kroyer
    A luncheon. The artist, his wife and the writer Otto Benzon, Peder Severin Krøyer

    Link is to zoomable version on Google Art project; downloadable file on Wikimedia Commons, original is in the Hirschsprung Collection, Copenhagen.

    Group portrait, self portrait, room interior or still life — Kroyer’s simple but beautifully painted domestic scene works brilliantly in any of those roles.

    Everything is alive with texture and color, the portrait of Krøyer’s wife, in particular, is sensitive and wonderfully expressive. Just the handling of the relative value of each figure against their section of the background is a lesson in compositional mastery. Just beautiful.

    See my previous posts on Peder Severin Krøyer (and here).



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Vasari Handcraftes artist's oil colors

Charley’s Picks
Bookshop.org

(Bookshop.org affilliate links; sales benefit independent bookshop owners; I get a small percentage to help support my work on Lines and Colors)

John Singer Sargent: Watercolors
John Singer Sargent: Watercolors

Sorolla the masterworks
Sorolla: the masterworks

The Art Spirit
The Art Spirit

Rendering in Pen and Ink
Rendering in Pen and Ink

Urban Sketching: Understanding Perspective
Urban Sketching: Understanding Perspective

World of Urban Sketching
World of Urban Sketching

Daily Painting
Daily Painting

Drawing on the right side of the brain
Drawing on the right side of the brain

Understanding Comics
Understanding Comics

Charley’s Picks
Amazon

(Amazon.com affiliate links; sales go to a larger yacht for Jeff Bezos; but I get a small percentage to help support my work on Lines and Colors)

John Singer Sargent: Watercolors
John Singer Sargent: Watercolors

Sorolla the masterworks
Sorolla: the masterworks

The Art Spirit
The Art Spirit

Rendering in Pen and Ink
Rendering in Pen and Ink

Urban Sketching: Understanding Perspective
Urban Sketching: Understanding Perspective

World of Urban Sketching
World of Urban Sketching

Daily Painting
Daily Painting

Drawing on the right side of the brain
Drawing on the right side of the brain

Understanding Comics
Understanding Comics